


Paper Cup Aquarium

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Waiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-18
Updated: 2006-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:19:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was just a sense of needing to wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Cup Aquarium

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: "all things"  
> A/N: How I love S7.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this and no infringement is intended.

It wasn't fear that kept Scully from finding Mulder in his apartment some dull night and sitting him down for some frank conversation and hopefully some explosive sex. Not fear exactly. Not reserve exactly - their intimacy was beyond any precedent she knew, and the frank discussion would only be the verbal expression of a long series of looks, brief touches, and small sweet kisses on the forehead. Not anxiety, not apprehension, not reluctance or inability. There was just a sense of needing to wait, of an opportune moment only visible as a smudge on the horizon. There was no place to make landfall where they were, drifting in the vast oceans of conspiracy and other theories.

She imagined from time to time the moment that would be. Sometimes in her mind tears were shed, but in recognition of joy and remembrance of sorrow and lost time. Sometimes they just kissed each other until they couldn't breathe.

They were so backwards. Didn't sex usually come first? Then the emotional baggage. But they had issues to stock three marriages and none of the benefits.

No, Scully's hesitation wasn't caused by terror, merely by a sense of the incremental: while Mulder went flat out or full stop, she had always progressed through logical steps, as if each stage of her life was a cup slowly filling with water. The spillover would come, but it was   
a matter of time. She was patient. Mulder was not, though he had cobbled together a jury-rigged patchwork sort of patience; it wore thin easily and these days she would see that spooky look in his eyes that said he was ready to run. So she let him go to England by himself,   
though eager herself for a sight of London. By now she knew when a cusp was approaching. The tension between them over the baby and Pfaster had added a lot of water to the cup; she could sense something was about to brim over.

And then: Daniel. He touched her and she shivered. The cup tipped. All her memories spilled on the ground and lay flapping and gasping like so many tiny bright fish. She couldn't sort through them quickly enough, couldn't tell what was worth saving from the paper cup aquarium of her life.

So she took a deep breath, grabbed a blind double handful of minnow memories, and offered them to God on a Buddhist shrine. Melissa, Emily, her mother, but mostly Mulder, looking at her with such tenderness. Scully found that her crossroads life had turned into a cloverleaf interchange, looping and looping, but here was her exit to the way through. She took it. What else was there?

And then: Mulder, puzzled on his couch. She woke up on his couch to find him watching her, cradling a cup of tea long-cooled. She took it from him, set it on the table.

Now, she said. Now is the time.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Synchronicity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4176135) by [wendelah1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/pseuds/wendelah1)




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